- Ren, Yijiu
- Huang, Shujun
- Dai, Chenyang
- Xie, Dong
- Zheng, Larry
- Xie, Huikang
- Zheng, Hui
- She, Yunlang
- Zhou, Fangyu
- Wang, Yue
- Li, Pengpeng
- Fei, Ke
- Jiang, Gening
- Zhang, Yang
- Su, Bo
- Sweet-Cordero, E Alejandro
- Tran, Nhan Le
- Yang, Yanan
- Patel, Jai N
- Rolfo, Christian
- Rocco, Gaetano
- Cardona, Andrés Felipe
- Tuzi, Alessandro
- Suter, Matteo B
- Yang, Ping
- Xu, Wayne
- Chen, Chang
- et al.
Objective: Synchronous multiple ground-glass nodules (SM-GGNs) are a distinct entity of lung cancer which has been emerging increasingly in recent years in China. The oncogenesis molecular mechanisms of SM-GGNs remain elusive. Methods: We investigated single nucleotide variations (SNV), insertions and deletions (INDEL), somatic copy number variations (CNV), and germline mutations of 69 SM-GGN samples collected from 31 patients, using target sequencing (TRS) and whole exome sequencing (WES). Results: In the entire cohort, many known driver mutations were found, including EGFR (21.7%), BRAF (14.5%), and KRAS (6%). However, only one out of the 31 patients had the same somatic missense or truncated events within SM-GGNs, indicating the independent origins for almost all of these SM-GGNs. Many germline mutations with a low frequency in the Chinese population, and genes harboring both germline and somatic variations, were discovered in these pre-stage GGNs. These GGNs also bore large segments of copy number gains and/or losses. The CNV segment number tended to be positively correlated with the germline mutations (r = 0.57). The CNV sizes were correlated with the somatic mutations (r = 0.55). A moderate correlation (r = 0.54) was also shown between the somatic and germline mutations. Conclusion: Our data suggests that the precancerous unstable CNVs with potentially predisposing genetic backgrounds may foster the onset of driver mutations and the development of independent SM-GGNs during the local stimulation of mutagens.